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[music "bill nye the science guy theme song"] bill nye: love that song. yes. can we use these? is this ok? vikram bajaj: i hope so. bill nye: let's hope they work. there's a lot ofgravity up here. i can feel it.

look at this guy onthe picture, man. he will mess you up. wow. it's big. it's the big picture. yes, vik, greetings. vikram bajaj: verynice to meet you. so i'd like tobegin by taking you through some really depressingslides, if you don't mind.

i'm sorry about this. bill nye: yeah, that'd be great,because i was really upbeat. let's knock that down. vikram bajaj: clickthrough these. bill nye: oh, yeah. oh, yeah. vikram bajaj: sowe're very concerned about public perceptionsof science, as are you. and there's some reallydepressing numbers.

i'm just going to gothrough them rapidly. so first of all, only40-some percent of americans right now believethat global warming is caused by human activity. bill nye: less thanhalf is our problem. vikram bajaj: less than half. bill nye: when it comes toelections, that's a big deal. vikram bajaj: oh. bill nye: no, it is.

that's what i'm talking about. vikram bajaj: and asa consequence of that, very few people actuallybelieve that this is a problem that we'll facein our lifetimes. and-- bill nye: oh, you'll see. yeah. vikram bajaj: so-- [laughter]

bill nye: no, i mean,it's a big deal. vikram bajaj: in thecase of human evolution, we also have a similar problem. only 19% of americans,according to gallup, believe in the unfetteredhuman evolution driven by natural physical laws. there's about 30% whobelieve in something called intelligent design, andabout a constant number who believe thatwe were all created

6,000 years ago, in an instant. and another consequenceof this is really how it's beingtaught in schools. here in red, yousee all the states where there is no mentionof human evolution in the formal school curricula. some mention biologicalevolution, but not human evolution, notevolution of mankind. bill nye: he means humankind.

no, i mean, it'sjust a new habit. for example, my mom was awoman, just for example. she's right there. it's not unusual. no. vikram bajaj: but we'll askyou about her later, actually. so there's also adepressing trend to use public taxpayermoney, taxpayer dollars, to fund creation educationin public schools

in several states, in charterschools, in voucher schools. and of course, there aremainstream politicians who don't believein this at all. now-- bill nye: you have thepicture of the guys-- how many of you running forpresident believe in evolution? three of them don't. vikram bajaj: yes. bill nye: can you imagine--

vikram bajaj: three of thefour republican governors. bill nye: --if these guysgot to be in charge-- well, they are in charge. they're governors. the most technicallyadvanced-- at least the biggest innovations, likegoogle, come out of the us. and to have peoplethat don't believe in the process ofscience running the show is just a formula for disaster.

vikram bajaj: absolutely. bill nye: it is. vikram bajaj: so googleis a scientific company. we're very sciencedriven, quantitative. and this is particularlydepressing to us. here's belief in evolution-- bill nye: oh,gosh, look at this. vikram bajaj: and i know thatsome of your recent criticism of pseudo science,in general, really

is based on arguments ofeconomic competitiveness. bill nye: for me, it is, yeah. like you guys-- how many of youwatch "the science guy" show? audience: [cheering] bill nye: i loveyou, man, woman. no, so if we produce ageneration of science students that don't believein science, you're not going to have the nextgoogle, whatever that is. you will not havethe next generation

of employees at google. texas instruments had toadvertise for, i guess, engineers in maryland,because they were concerned-- texas instruments is not calledmaryland instruments-- because of the quality of the marylandschool system in comparison. so hopefully, you'llhelp us, you'll arm us-- bill nye: it's all me. vikram bajaj: withinstruments to fight this, because our reactionin observing this

is to be pretty depressed. we don't know how exactlyto counteract these forces. we hope you'llteach us about that. maybe, actually, thiswould be more appropriate, considering the subjectof our conversation today. bill nye: for thoseof you who don't know, that's my old boss there. vikram bajaj: solet's begin there. we can remove ourfriend from the screen.

bill nye: that's notreally my old boss. it's a guy i usedto sit next to. vikram bajaj: so my firstquestion is really an easy one. you've seen the numbers. now, you're a science educator. i'm a scientist. are those dismalnumbers a failure of my profession or yours? bill nye: oh, it's me.

it's all me. what's happened in theus is the people teaching or asked to teach scienceare not especially qualified to teach it, because themoney's just not very good. if you come out ofengineering school and you can get a job makingwhat you guys make here or get a job making a thirdof that going to a facility where the paint's peelingand it smells like urine and some people literallyare carrying weapons,

what would you do? i mean, if i wereking of the forest. and i'm not. but the longest journeystarts with a single step. so our first problem iseducating science educators. but if you have schoolboards-- in other words, we have to doeverything all at once. if you have school boards whoare insisting that creationism be put in textbooks, thenthat's a hard row to hoe.

vikram bajaj: yeah. bill nye: butwe've got to do it. vikram bajaj: well,to what extent is this actually a uniquelyamerican phenomenon? has this happenedin other countries? bill nye: doesn't seem to. and you can see on thatgross domestic product chart, or handwritten graph-- no,really, whatever you call it. the thing.

how do we use the word "chart?" it's a graph. it's a depiction. you see that industrializedcountries, in general, believe in theprocess of science, and evolution is the mainidea in all of life science, so they believe in that, too. but as i say, evolutionis not something you can choosenot to believe in.

i mean, this gets tobe sarcastic and weird. you can choose not to believein gravity for a few moments. but you'll see pretty quickly,if you jump off a building, you'll see right away,you're headed for trouble. vikram bajaj: indeed. bill nye: it's notthe fall, right? ha, ha, ha, ha. it's the sudden stop. vikram bajaj: so let'sget into the topic

of your book a little bit now. so you wrote this book-- bill nye: no, i'mreally proud of it, man. vikram bajaj: --partly toaddress that problem, i think. but who's the audience? who do you want to read this-- bill nye: everybodyin the whole world. so i'll tell the story. it's not very long,thank goodness.

so my friends callme shiny object man. it's a little bit of a problem. so when you go to sit downto write a book that's going to have 100,000 wordsor something in a row, you have to be disciplined. so i was looking foran editor to help me. and the guy i came acrossthrough mutual acquaintances in the business, a guynamed corey powell. and he's a cool guy.

he was editor of"discover magazine" and contributes to"scientific american." he also contributesto another magazine you may not know called"american scientist." and he said, what we'vegot to do is bottle, bottle what you talk about,and put it in a book. and that worked out really well. but when he was tryingto decide whether or not to work with shinyobject man over dinner,

he asked me why iwas writing the book, because according to him-- andwhen i watch other television shows, people writebooks just for the sake of having written a book. but he asked me, whydid you write this book? and i told him i wantto change the world. i want to change the world. is that so wrong? and that's when hedecided to get on board.

so i wrote it for everybody. and i wrote it in english,as that's my native tongue. no, i mean, really. and i wrote it in this way thatinvolves me telling stories or anecdotes ormy point of view. and there's a reason for that. first of all, it sounds like me,which appeals to some people. and then the otherthing is, i remember the time i met ivan the gorilla.

no, you don't. yeah, i do. yes, i do remember. and so when you talkabout how you feel, people can't disagree with that. vikram bajaj: so i thinkthe entrenched opponents to your worldview, which isthe evolutionary worldview, the worldview that alsobelieves in gravity-- bill nye: yeah.

vikram bajaj: --they may not beyour customers for this book. but certainly,people like us, who may have occasion topersuade some of them, can really benefitfrom reading it. bill nye: well,the other thing is people who are anxious aboutit, who are troubled by the idea that we are all descendantfrom species that came before-- 90% ofeverything that's ever lived has disappeared-- peoplewho are troubled by that,

i hope they readthe book, because i think it's empowering. and the process of evolutionfills me with reverence. i mean, my goodness. just to drop another name, ihad astronomy from carl sagan. i did. look, you guys, i was just someguy in the back of the room. "the solar system"-- that wasthe name of the course, still is the name of course.

and i was in theback of the room. i did ok. no, i did. i was not, like,the star student. but he was the guy whoreally imbued in me, or gave me thefundamental understanding that, since you and iare made of exploded stars, the dust of explodedstars, you and i, all of us, are somehow at least oneway that the universe has

come to know itself. and that is amazing. that is amazing. and every day, it fillsme with reverence. and maybe more to the point,it, like, freaks me out. vikram bajaj: so your choiceof the word "reverence" is interesting. you debated, infebruary, i think, ken ham, the noted, orinfamous, creationist.

did your arguments fillhim with reverence? bill nye: well, i would liketo think that i lit a spark. and keep in mind, everybody,that in that debate, in that room, i wasnot going to convince ken ham-- how manypeople saw it? anybody saw it? wow, look at you guys. i love you, man, woman. i was not going to change hismind in two and a half hours.

he's made a career, he'smade quite a living, on this idea that theearth is 6,000 years old. but my audience was youall, was people online. and i've met many, many scienceteachers the last few months who told me that theyuse the debate in class. and that's pretty cool. i mean, that'sreaching somebody. so what i alwayssay, many of you probably know or have familymembers who are creationists,

or if they're notcreationists, they're deeply troubled by theidea that we are descendant from somebody who is not human. even, again, on old boss jokecould be put right there. some people are deeplytroubled by that. you're not going to changetheir minds in one sitting. it's a process. so i hope this bookis part of that. vikram bajaj: well,let's get into the book,

since the book beganin that debate. perhaps you can start by takingus back to the 1830s, where-- bill nye: ah, yes. vikram bajaj: notliterally, please. bill nye: vik, i wasn't there. vikram bajaj: no. but you wrote about it-- bill nye: yeah, yeah. vikram bajaj: --recently.

bill nye: but by the way,ken ham, one of his things is historical science andobservational science. bill nye: so if you weren'tthere to observe it, it doesn't count. vikram bajaj: all bets are off. so i'm like, dude, have youever seen "csi-- louisville?" or do they have that now? they probably do. is there a louisville,kentucky, csi?

i think so. i think there is. there's so many. i know fargo is coming. but you were saying-- vikram bajaj: so that's exactlythe most interesting point. how could darwin, just with hiscollection of observations from a five-year voyage, withoutthe benefit of illumina-- bill nye: dna.

he knew nothing of dna. vikram bajaj: exactly. how could he have come upwith such a far-ranging theory of such predictive value? bill nye: he was thoughtful. and what's striking is, as somany people have commented, why didn't anybody elsethink of it before? and it shows you howmany-- or notice it before-- how manyexpectations must

be built into each of us,how many assumptions we make about the universeand our relationship to it, the cosmosand our relationship to it, that are just wrong,and we don't even know it. but i did tell the story,my grandmother lived in, looking back, a pretty bighouse in washington, dc. it had three bedrooms,which at that time is a pretty big house. and so she had boarders,people who would rent rooms,

after my uncle and mydad left the house. and there was someguy that would sit at the dinner tabletalking about chicken bones. and "look how the knee isjust like the human knee, but it's reversed. and isn't this cool? and look at this cartilage. it's just like human cartilage." and my grandmother, who wasquite the naturalist-- she

would collect wildflowers; she was really something-- thoughtthat was cool. but my grandfather was somehowdeeply troubled by this. he went to church and stuffin a very traditional way. but even this guy noticedthese connections. why didn't anybody else noticethese connections before? it was really quite a thing. and darwin realized,apparently-- i'm not an expert ondarwin-- but he apparently

spent a lot of time making surehe had everything worked out. i don't know if you've everread "the origin of species by means of natural selection." but he did all theseexperiments with roses and bees and barnacles-- he was justreally into it-- to make sure what he was observing, hishypothesis, was correct. and then this guy russelwallace-- and there's a whole bunch of people, andi'm right there with you, who celebrate russel wallace,as he came up with the same idea

at the same time. and why isn't there arussel wallace society, and when will we haverussel wallace day, and why isn't russellwallace on our dollar bills? ok. he was 16 yearsyounger than darwin. darwin had a littlehead start on him. and darwin's book, wherehe's got both the hypothesis, or the theory, of evolutionand the experiments

backing it up in one volume. that's way darwin's nameis so closely tied-- vikram bajaj: and it's a veryaccessible book even today. even now, it's very readable. vikram bajaj: well, whyisn't darwin on any currency? bill nye: well,he is in britain. vikram bajaj: is he? bill nye: darwin's ondollar-- on dollar bills-- on bills in britain.

vikram bajaj: oh, interesting. so can you take usthrough some of the more contemporary evidencefor darwin's theories? let's start with geologyand the fossil record. i know you do thisvery well in the book. bill nye: well, you guys, i wentto school in ithaca, new york. and you can walkaround in ithaca-- you don't have to be anysort of amazing geology guy-- and you can find trilobitefossils, zillions of them.

trilobites lived somethinglike 238 million years-- way longer than humans have beenon earth by a factor of 100, i guess-- factor of 100,not 100, a factor of 100. and so you findall those fossils. well, how'd they all getthere, for crying out loud? and then darwinwrestled with this. and how does a new speciescome into existence? and it's just a cool story. i don't know if you know aboutthe mosquitoes in the london

underground, the tube. so apparently, the mosquitoeswere living in the underground when they dug all thesetunnels in the late 1800s. there were mosquitoesliving down there. and they would feed onpeople like you and me. and they would generally-- imean, if you're a mosquito, you feed on a few people, andthen they close the subway, you go back upstairs at night andfeed on some other people. but then, when worldwar ii came along,

they used the undergroundstations as bomb shelters. and it's quite effective. i mean, gettingbombed kind of sucks. but it was quite effective. but this really acceleratedthe certain mosquitoes. pipiens has become molestus. the mosquitoes thatbuzzes, pipien, has become themosquito that annoys. so there's apparentlya new species

of mosquito evolving in thelondon underground right now. and furthermore, youcan see the spectrum. most of the undergroundmosquitoes cannot breed with the above grounds. so the pipiens cannotbreed with the molestus. but there are afew that still can. like you can see that there'sa spectrum of this new species coming into existence,like in real time, like in one person's lifetime.

and that's amazing. that's amazing. it's not surprising,really, but it's amazing. vikram bajaj: so what connectsthese contemporary examples of speciation-- and thereare a couple that you go over in your book,including evolution of antibiotic resistanceand other things short of speciation--what connects that with this historicalfossil record?

is it dna evidence? how do you know howold the fossils are? bill nye: oh, i see. well, yeah, how many peoplehave not taken geology? i don't know you guys. i don't know how you live. i don't know anythingabout your habits. but you'll find that the olderdirty clothes that you've discarded on the floor areunderneath the more recent

dirty clothes. and the same is true in geologywith respect to sediments and overlays and so on. and i'm not the world'sforemost geologist, but i can tell you the stuffat the bottom of the grand canyon's older thanthe stuff at the top. i don't make therules, as we say. the other just amazing thingthat was sort of discovered, really, in my father's lifetime,my grandfather's lifetime,

is radioactivity and howyou can work backwards. and people throw out theword "carbon dating." carbon dating, it'sfine, but that's not what we're talking about. carbon dating is good on, like,tens of thousands of years. radiometric dating,where you have-- i mean, who doesn't loverubidium and strontium? these are elementsthat are out there. and they're radioactive.

and i like thatone in many ways. first of all, its half-lifeof rubidium becoming strontium is 48.8 billion years--b-- billion years. and it's a case where oneof the neutrons in rubidium becomes a proton. it goes up the periodic table,giving off some electrons and neutrinos. who wouldn't? and so then thesethings are chemically

in the same column on theperiodic table as calcium and sodium so that, inthe melt, as these guys love-- who doesn'tlove the melt? the melt-- you're talkingabout molten rocks. you're talking abouthawaii or someplace. these things are all mixed in. but once they freeze,once it cools off, then, chemically,some of the rubidium, some of thestrontium, is replaced

by some of the sodium,some of the calcium. and then you can workthis clock backwards. this is amazing, it's amazing. and that was discoveredlong after darwin's writing this book. i mean, it's just cool. just think what elsewe just don't know anything about, rightunder our noses. vikram bajaj: of course,to believe in that, you

have to believe in-- bill nye: everything. vikram bajaj:--the inviolability of physical laws, which,as we saw in your debate, that's not always been the case. so one of theextraordinary claims this guy makes,these people make, is that physicallaws are mutable, you can just change them.

super-guy shows up andgoes, the speed of light, i'm going to quintuple it forawhile, without telling anyone. it's unreasonable. and this wouldn'tmatter, vik, would not matter-- this guy can spendhis millions of dollars and build his thing andrun around doing his stuff. but they have thisenormous program to indoctrinate kids,people in kindergarten, that the earth is6,000 years old

and all these things on howto defend your otherwise completely unreasonablebelief and so on. and that's what'sreally troubling. vikram bajaj: i agree. so tell us a bit-- and yououtlined this in your book in greater detail-- about theparallel line of evidence from modern dna sequencing methodsthat also establishes-- vikram bajaj: --age of life. bill nye: it's amazing.

so you guys, there's mutationsthat happen natural-- i mean, every time you tryto make a copy, there's going to be a change. sometimes, the changeis significant. most of the time, it's not. it's just in the-- whatdo you guys call it? healthy software? healthy code. healthy coding.

vikram bajaj: ah, yes. bill nye: yeah, where you justleave old code in the thing because you don'twant to mess with it. then it turns out there'ssome bug in there-- bah! smoke comes out. yeah, so there's apparentlya lot of leftover dna that doesn't do--we can't figure out what it does right now. it doesn't seem tomake any change.

but there are verysignificant changes. these things happenregularly, like a clock. so you can assess the speedat which dna is changing, and then you can work back towhen the neanderthals and us were apparently hunting thesame game and interacting. can we say "interacting" here? in fact, you need notuse the euphemism. but-- bill nye: they were doing it.

they were jumping each other. they were having sex. they had sexual intercourse. vikram bajaj: soactually, that-- bill nye: interaction. that whole interactculture that's emerged now. vikram bajaj: it bringsme to my next question. and it's an importanttopic in evolution. i think you spend themajority of the book on this.

so i'd like to readfrom one chapter. bill nye: oh, i love you. he's reading. no, that's worthy. vikram bajaj: thechapter's called "my prom and sexual selection." so it begins, "beinga nerd, i did not anticipate going tomy high school prom." bill nye: it's true.

vikram bajaj:"nevertheless, i did. i was driven todo so, apparently, by the shape of leith's legs"-- bill nye: leith. vikram bajaj: leith. excuse me. --"a clearly female classmate. this fascination with sexis, near as anyone can tell, not something we get to choose.

our ancestorsbequeathed it to us. it is another one of thosedeeply shared evolutionary traits, a drive thatwe cannot disengage." so what's the role of sexualreproduction in evolution? bill nye: that's an old mystery. but we have an excellent theoryas to why sex is so popular. and not just among people. dandelions and seajellies, barnacles, they're all doing it likecrazy out there.

and so it's complicated. you know, one of thethings i often reflect on, it's "the lilies of thefield, they do not toil, nor do they sow." they don't do anything. actually, if you're a lily,you are busting your empennage to make flowers. all the energy you put intomaking ova, eggs and pollen, it's a tremendousamount of work.

and the reason it'sdone, apparently, is because of parasites. so if you're a metamulticellular organism, like us, your enemy,in general, is not a lion, a tiger, or a bear. those, of course, are trouble,as well documented in the film. but your main problemis germs and parasites. so germs, if they're bacteria,they're reproducing like crazy. they double in just a few hours.

you'll have-- unchecked--enormous populations of germs. but us, it takes us months. and after all the negotiation,the going out to dinner, and all that stuff-- no,it takes a long time. and then, when the kid's born,you're looking at nothing. you've got years moreon top of that, right? so apparently, sexis a way to come up with a new combination of genesthat the germs, parasites, just can't quite keep up with.

and this is charmingly referredto as the theory of the red queen. but the guy was british,so the red queen. alice of "alicein wonderland" is in "through the lookingglass," the second book. and she meets the red queen,who's-- from my understanding, lewis carroll, i don'tknow if he smoked dope, but he probably did. and so the red queen is likethis chess piece person.

and she's sliding aroundon the chessboard of life. and so when you'retalking to her, you have to run all the time. but it's not explainedabout the queen's legs or her felt bottom,whatever chess pieces have. and so alice says, "youknow, where i come from, if you run all day, you'llend up somewhere else." and the queen says,"well, that seems like a very slowsort of country."

and so this is theidea of evolution. if you stop running, you willfall off the treadmill of life. you will disappear. so this having sex, newcombination of genes, new combination of genes,is how you stay in the game. and the predictive quality ofthe theory of evolution just really comes into play. and i mentionedthis in kentucky, and i mention itagain in the book.

these crazy fish-- vikram bajaj: the minnows. bill nye: --in mexico--the top minnows is how we say it in english--when there are not enough mates around, they just becomewhat darwin called asexual. but we might callit double-sexual. they just start reproducingwithout doing it. and then thosereproduced fish are more susceptible to parasites.

but then, when itrains again and there's a whole bunch of pondsto swim around in and the fish populationgets big again, then they go back tosexual reproduction. crazy. humans don't do that. i mean, a lot is saidabout it nowadays, but humans don't do that. it's not the thing.

vikram bajaj: there's actuallyone aspect of human sexuality, i think, that youdon't touch upon-- bill nye: what? vikram bajaj: --in the book. just one. bill nye: becauseit fascinates me. vikram bajaj: and of course,for thousands of years, we've known that same-sexrelationships are perfectly normal, documented.

and there's an increasingbody of literature which suggests somegenetic causes, as well as epigenetic causes. oh, absolutely. vikram bajaj: so what's theevolutionary theoretical thinking on homosexuality? bill nye: well, i'mnot an expert on this. but i can tell you-- andthe word people throw around nowadays, it's a spectrum.

i think being a homosexualguy is clearly not genetically lethal. homosexual guys have babies,have kids, all the time. and so there's some blur. and also, my understanding--i'm not an expert on this-- but apparently, it's avery common-- people always presume that humanfemale sexuality is more fluid thanmale sexuality. but apparently, humanmale homosexuals often

have a period of havinga crush or a thing for a woman, a female human. so it must be-- becauseit doesn't kill you, because it doesn't keepyou from having babies, it's still out there. or it's out there. or it's out there-- it'salways been out there. but i'm not an expert on that. and i'm telling you there'san evolutionary reason for it.

there's got to be. bill nye: it's got to beconsistent with the theory of evolution, whateverit turns out to be. vikram bajaj: there havebeen some papers and articles recently on the subject relatingto kin selection and altruism, which are some of thecounterintuitive aspects of evolutionary theory. maybe we could getinto those now. bill nye: at first.

vikram bajaj: at first, yes. so proponents ofcreationism, they often claim that there is no altruismin the evolutionary model. perhaps you canexplain how that's-- bill nye: oh, without them. without the religion,there'd be no altruism. no, apparently, altruismis-- for those of you-- it's a word noteverybody uses all the time-- the drive tohelp somebody else out,

to help out anothermember of your species. and the example that i justam charmed by are the bats. did anybody see thebill nye caves show? that was a great one. it was really good. it was later on,and we had a budget. and so we flew to carlsbadcavern in new mexico. and it was just cool. but we were able to beright there with the bats.

and there are a lotof bats, you guys. so apparently, the bats go out,they eat mosquitoes all night. not everybody is a goodmosquito hunter, bat-wise. and so if a bat comesback to the roost and has not had enough toeat, one of the other bats will, out of courtesy,barf up some mosquito barf and feed the other guy. vikram bajaj: interesting. bill nye: now, whywould they do that?

and as i say in thebook, that hungry bat should not have beenwearing those headphones and listening to thatrock 'n' roll music. he should've been echolocatingand eating mosquitoes at very high speed and so on. but why do they do that? well, apparently,it's to preserve their tribe, theirroost, their rookery. and it's a heck of a thing.

and i talk about humans. you guys can do thisthought experiment. and it's an experiment, ok? i mean, it's a game. it's a game theory. it's creepy. house is on fire, you're onlyallowed to save one person. that's a rule. do you save yourmother or-- let's

see, let me just--hang on-- do you save your grandmother, yourmother, or your own kid? and you save your ownkid, because you're driven to reach as far intothe genetic future as possible. with that said, humans arealways helping out other humans without nearly that closeof a genetic connection. you remember when thisbuilding was burning in texas and this constructionworker was there and they got the fire truckladder right up to it,

and the guy jumpedoff-- whoa-- and then the buildingcollapsed-- [whoosh]. and nobody said, well heshould he have done that? that was very dangerous. it's what humans do. we just help out other humans. and apparently,that's deep within us. and i don't want tocause no trouble. but that seems tobe deeper within us

and older than theinvention or discovery or whatever the expressionis of religions. vikram bajaj: sure. bill nye: so it's not clearthe cause and effect there. so perhaps we can go overone or two other really counterintuitiveaspects of evolution. so one that you describe-- bill nye: god, youread the book, vik. i love you, man.

vikram bajaj: i did. bill nye: no, a lot of times,you get interviewed by people, and the majority didn'tactually read the book because they've got stuff to do. and they just look atthe chapter titles. go ahead. vikram bajaj: so biodiversity. bill nye: biodiversity. vikram bajaj: yeah, how does itfit into evolutionary theory?

bill nye: well, it is reasonablethat the longer life has been in any one place, themore diverse it becomes. the longer species have beengenerating, interacting, with humans in thesubway or what have you, the more species you get. and not surprisingly,where there's the most sunlight, themost energy coming in from outer space, that'swhere the most diversity is, at the equator, ornear the equator.

in tropical rainforests is whereyou have the most diversity. then, as you go north orsouth from the equator, there's less diversity. with that said, itdoesn't mean that there are fewer individuals. if you've ever flown over theforest in canada or pacific northwest, there's just treesand trees and trees and trees. but there's actuallyless diversity of trees, less differenttypes of plants and animals

there, than in the amazon. and that's absolutelyconsistent with the way species come to be. it's what you'd expect. now, one of the greatmysteries right now-- and you guys may be alive whenthis is figured out-- well, of course, the fundamentalmystery is how did it all gets started. like, where didwe come from, man?

like, dude. and i talk about this all thetime with the planetary side. where did we comefrom, and are we alone? those are the deep,deep questions. but it's very reasonable thatlife started in the deep sea, in one of these hydrothermalvents, where there's all this hot water andsalt and nutrients-- i mean hot water andnutrients and heat. i guess hot water wouldhave heat, wouldn't it?

ok, thank you, bill. or did it start on landwith lightning strikes from a scraping atmosphereon the earth's surface and roiling? i tell the story, i walkedinto-- at cornell university-- i went to cornell, you guys. don't bust their chops. go, big red. but i'm sure it was amistake on their part.

they did not intend to let me. once i was there, theywere kind of stuck. but there's a wholebuilding called space sciences, madeof cinder block. it's not a greatlooking building. but on the third floor,i walked in one day on the urey-miller experiment. now, i was a mechanical-- istill am-- mechanical engineer. i have a license, people.

but i walked in there. and if you've neverheard of this thing, the urey-miller experimentis where these guys tried to reproduce theprimordial atmosphere of the earth and thenspark it with lightning to see if anything would happen. and indeed, they gotone zillion amino acids, carbon with oxygen-oxygen on it. and so i went, wow,that's evidence of life.

wow, it could be, butit's not quite alive. and so these questions goback, where'd we all come from? so did it start onthe surface, or did it start on the deep ocean? maybe you guys willfigure that out. doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo. vikram bajaj:actually, i do want to discuss the work ofyour planetary society. let me--

bill nye: i love you, man. vikram bajaj:--introduce that again. i think it's a natural correlateof evolutionary thinking. so you write, at theend of your book, "at the end of thejourney of this book, i find myself thinking aboutthe end journey of evolution itself, not justhuman evolution, but the process as a whole. i have long wonderedwhether there

is some kind of cosmicimperative for life to spread from world to world. on earth, we see that organismscolonize every possible niche. we see that living thingsmove into new environments and beget new species. is life destined to colonizethe solar system, the milky way, and ultimately to spread outthrough the whole universe?" so you don't answerthe question. bill nye: i don't know, man.

so you guys wereliving at a time where-- so you guys are all big,successful engineers, right? when i left, it was fortran 7. when i went to school,we had punch cards. and i had a sliderule. [coughing] and that's notthe good old days. but where would yoube working if you weren't working at google? spacex, right?

you want to work at spacex. i know, i know, i know. but i just tell everybody--do you guys know the motto of thestate of california? anybody? audience: eureka. bill nye: eureka. eureka-- i found it. and so these europeanpeople come over the hill.

and there are salmon in thesacramento river, like this. i mean, it's all theprotein you'd ever want. apparently, the firstamerican, first nation people from the pacificnorthwest are generally, by archaeologists,considered the richest people in the americas, becausethey had all these salmon. they had just infinite protein. so they could just messaround with other projects. but these guyscome over the hill,

and orange trees are like weeds. and then, at onepoint in california, the rocks are made of gold. like the rocks are gold. we still have the san francisco49ers, for crying out loud. but when you go to mars, youguys, it ain't like that. i'm sorry. it's hostile. it's freezing cold.

there is no liquid water. and when you open thedoor of the spaceship, you will find out rightaway, you cannot breathe. you will notice that. and so i want to go to mars,but i want to come back. i want to go look forsigns of life on mars. yes, yes, yes. if we discovered life onanother world in our lifetime, it would utterly, utterlychange this world.

it would changethe way everybody thinks about everything. and we can do it, youguys, for $2 billion. let's go. we can go out thereand have a look. vikram bajaj: let's talkabout mars a little bit more. there's flowing water on mars. there's, perhaps, goodreason to believe that life, maybe even as we knowit, existed there.

how would you find it? bill nye: so a couple things. i mean, don't get me wrong. my father was quitethe rock hound. you know this expression"some of my best friends." some of my best friendsare geologists, really. and i love rocks. every rock tells a story. but what we're doing right now,we spend about $1.5 billion

a year on planetary science. now, to put that inperspective, the nasa budget is $17.7 billion a year. and if you ask peopleon the street, what percentage of the us federalbudget is the nasa budget, somebody'll say, 10%. it's 0.4%. so $1.5 billion is 9% of 0.4%. and if we were to just up that alittle so that-- the expression

that these guys love isthe landing ellipse-- so that the spacecraft couldbe targeted to mars more accurately, then-- whoa--then 60-kilometer-long-- whoa, that's pretty close. let me tell you guys, if you'relooking for something to eat and you're off by 60 kilometers,you're going to be hungry. so what if we spentmore money and tightened that up and then made thesecool, extraordinary robots that could repel, in rockclimber fashion,

down the side of a hill on marsand get where there might be super salty slushy wateron a martian summer day, and then maybe you'dfind fossil microbes? but wait, maybe there'dbe something still alive. bahahaha. and we could do that,you know, $1.8 billion a year for 10 or 12 years. we could do that. we just have to be motivated.

and let alone if we spendapollo kind of money on it, we could get 'er done. and it would changethe freaking world. it would absolutelychange the world. and this is theromance of it for me. and we are uniquelyqualified to do this. well, we should bepaying teacher salaries, and we should be-- yes. if you're a politician,the problem is not,

should we pay teachers,should we go to mars? we have to do it all. and the other thing i'djust remind you guys-- and i know we're in new york. we're all a bunch ofprogressive, bleeding heart, liberal, crazy people--but remind you guys that when you invest inspace exploration especially, the return on itis extraordinary. you guys would not have jobswithout the space program.

the internet would not existwithout the us space program. and then you talk about allthe materials-- everybody loves his teflon andthis velcro and stuff. but it's theexpectation that you can get things donein a big way, that's what the spaceexploration brings to us. so that's why i advocatefor it right now. and then, along that line,i'd just remind everybody that climate change, inthe modern era-- i mean,

it was discovered in the19th century, really. and benjamin franklinspeculated about it. but in the modernera, climate change was discovered, really, onvenus, the planet venus. and so space exploration justbrings out the best in us. and that's why-- vikram bajaj: including carlsagan and others, jim hansen. bill nye: well,carl sagan-- so i like to say-- yeah, jameshansen-- the computer models

that we use even todayfor climate modeling are based, really, on theoriginal ones from the 1970s. and right aroundthe year 1980 is when people really-- whereyou guys even freaking born in 1980? i suck. it was right there wheredisco was giving way to punk and new wave andthe important work of sid vicious and the sex pistols.

sorry, i don't get it. i never got it. not my thing. vikram bajaj: so thesubject is actually related to some of the questionsthat the audience is raising. bill nye: oh, herewe are, tweeting. that's how we roll. vikram bajaj: it'sour version of that. bill nye: oh, sorry, sorry.

my bad. ooh. whoa, whoa, whoa. we're geeking. vikram bajaj: whose namei forget, i must admit. so we don't havean apollo program. some of us who grewup in the '80s, we were nevertheless motivatedby space exploration, human space flight.

now we're faced with reallyexistential problems, where science is the only solution. but there's nothingreally to motivate people to go into science as-- bill nye: well, that'sour job here at google. vikram bajaj: what'sthe role for google, and what's the role forbig government science? bill nye: ok. i have an issue now.

there are peoplein elected office who feel that government is bad. like, why did youtake this gig, man? they feel thatgovernment should be shrunk as much aspossible and destroyed. as that guy, the anti-taxguy, says, to put in a bathtub and drown. i just reallydisagree with that. the new york city subway takesa billion passengers a year.

you absolutely could not dothat in the libertarian society. you just couldn't. sorry, man. and i don't wanttwo sets of sewers, two sets of phone lines,two sets of cell towers. phone lines, sorry,older reference. sorry. i don't know if youknew this, but there used to be copper wiresthat transmitted voice.

it was ok. not much bandwidth. it was all right. it was a long time ago. it was more thantwo years ago, yeah. they're still in the '10s,the 2010s, 20 aughts. so one of thethings about climate change that is somethingfor everybody to consider, people who are againstgovernment intrusion,

government gettinginto your business, i think they're really goingto be troubled by what's going to be required toaddress climate change. and the model for this is inmy parents' day, world war ii. you couldn't just buytires for your car. you couldn't just buy meat. you couldn't buycertain vegetables, especially atcertain times a year. they weren't available, becausethe man stepped in and sent it

to the boys to conduct the war. and that was governmentintrusion in a way that-- people talk aboutthe greatest generation. part of the reason thatpeople considered it great is because they worked together. and to addressclimate change, it's going to be that same deal. the sooner we get started,the better, for me. vikram bajaj: and what roledo you see, more specifically,

for large corporations,like google? bill nye: like google? man. vikram bajaj: whatdo you want us to do? bill nye: no, thekey to the future, kids, peoples, you are it. you are it. wait. no, you are it, becausethe key to the future

is not just to do less. i grew up-- i'm so old-- iremember the very first earth day. the very first earth day wasin 1970, before motown really was called motown. the motor city existed, butthe music, although it existed, didn't have that sobriquet. anyway-- digress, me? vikram bajaj: or perhapsthere's no easy answer.

bill nye: no, no. so in those days, everybodywanted you to do less, to drive your car less,to use less clean water, so wear dirty clothes. and humans are bad. humans don't belongin the ecosystem, humans have nothing to do withnature, get rid of humans. in fact, if youcan, just don't eat. don't even eat, really.

and that's turnedout to be, as you might imagine, notespecially popular. and so the key to thefuture is not to do less. the key is to do more with less. and that's wherecompanies like google enable this in an amazing way. do you know how manyhours people my age spent in the freaking library? i mean, going to lookthings up in a card catalog

was a skill you developed. but the difference was,when you found stuff in the encyclopedia--if you found the atomic numberof strontium-- 38-- in the encyclopediabritannica, it was almost certainly correct. there was no issue with that. whereas now, when youlook on wikipedia, you just don't know whatyou're going to get.

so it's a new skill thatstudents have to develop, is how to sift through thisgreater volume of lower quality information. but the world will be better,because not everybody has to get in the car orthe subway to commute. people can commutefrom their phone. the planetary side,people are extraordinarily productive without ever cominginto the office, i have to say. but that doesn'tmean i don't want

you coming into theoffice, you guys. i'm sorry, if you're out there. and so google is a keyto doing more with less. but somewhere alongthe line, you guys, somebody's going to haveto make electricity. you can have all theserver farms you want, but if you can't plug themin, we're in bad shape. and this is when-- isit true that robots are going to takeover the world?

i mean, if somebody keepsshoveling coal for them, i guess. but if you stopmaking electricity, the robots will really havea hard time of it, generally. no, they'll makenuclear power plants. ok, all right, maybe. it's not so simple. so go ahead. hold it.

it says right here, we'renot going to do any-- whoa, i've blown it. vikram bajaj: so thereis really no easy answer. it's something that weall have to struggle to-- bill nye: well, when it comes toclimate change, in my opinion, the answer is to do everythingwe possibly can, all at once. how's that? more efficient electricity,more efficient trans-- transportation is ahuge cost, especially

in the us-- more efficientcities, more efficient farms, in the biggest picture,and of course, raising the quality of life,especially of women and girls, because deep withinthis problem-- when i was here at theworld's fair, in 1965, i was nine years old,the world had just gotten 3 billion people. well, a few days ago, i checked. we're at 7.2 billion people.

and that's it. you've more than doubledthe number of humans burning and breathing theatmosphere in the last two decades. that's your problem. so we need to reducethe human population. we do. but i mean, this is--you guys, we don't do it. by the way, war iscompletely ineffective.

ebola will not do it. and you can see it historically. the scale of theproblem is huge. well, if you raise the standardof living of women and girls, over the nextcentury and a half, the human population willstabilize and go down. bill nye: and the way to do thatis to educate women and girls. this is a really huge problem. but let's get going, people.

we can change the world. audience: whoo, yeah. [applause] bill nye: thanks, you guys. i love you guys. vikram bajaj: so we don't havetime for audience questions, for live questions. but there was one lastquestion that i wanted to-- bill nye: the dead questionsare very troubling.

vikram bajaj: there's onelast question from the screen that i wanted todiscuss with you. it's really, again, onthe subject of evolution. how can individuals debatetheir family members, others, who are creationistsor who don't understand evolutionary theory? bill nye: so you guys,that is your job. people ask me-- i see a fewof these questions-- what's the most importantthing you could do?

what's a single-- ifyou had to do one thing, who's the target audience--[intentionally mumbles] oh, i see the higgs boson. let me just say, youguys, i'm not so sure. 5 sigma is good. but it ain't 9 sigma. it ain't 7 sigma. i've said it, ok? i've said it.

i believe in 5 sigma,but compare a toyota to a detroit car. toyota designs at 5 sigma,detroit designs at 3. compare and contrast. vikram bajaj: there may haveto be some retractions now. bill nye: no, i'm just saying. so the single mostimportant thing we can all do rightnow, i believe, is talk about climate change.

just raise awareness. just make it part of oureveryday conversation, because we are all livingin a little bit of denial of climate change. and i'm the firstto say, me too. i, as well. mea culpa. by raising awarenessof climate change, we will get something done.

now, just by wayof example, my dad took a job in 1941on wake island. i don't know if you'veever heard of it. you go to hawaii, andthen you go about that far again to wake. it's still a tacticallyimportant place. there are about 700 us air forcelandings, airplane landings, every year. when you went toasia, in the old days,

you'd fly from san franciscoto pearl harbor to wake and then on to midway,usually, in shanghai, in china. but without wake island,you couldn't make that trip. anyway, everybody thought,well, things are going to be ok. there's never going tobe a war in the pacific. world war ii is nevergoing to come to the us. everything's going to be fine. and my dad took that job, andthen he ended up in prison camp for four years.

and so i don't recommendthat, by the way. but people in the us, justlooking at it historically-- and this new movie came outabout turing, alan turing, and everything-- peoplethought the problem is so big, it won't happen. and i think we're all doing thatwith respect to climate change. so talk about it. talk about climate change. talk about evolution.

get in fights over the isaacnewton's birthday holiday christmas table. isaac newton was bornon christmas day, by the way, asreckoned in britain. in italy, it was thefourth of january. they were still notagreeing on the calendar. but i always say,isaac newton's mom thought it was christmasday, for crying out loud. so you guys, just talkabout climate change.

and then, together,i strongly believe, as i look at history andthe greatest generation and what have you,we can do this. so thank you all so much. thank you for coming.

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